Food: The meal: Allan Brown: Conran's tyranny of good taste

The food is cheap at the price. And the ashtrays are, literally, a steal. So why does Sir Terences new restaurant still miss that vital spark?

Sir Terence Conran opened his first bespoke Scottish restaurant the other week: Etain, sited round the back of the Princes Square shopping mall. It’s been a long time coming. For years the ground has been shaking beneath the approaching tread of this culinary mastodon but something has always halted his progress.

Finally, though, Sir Terry’s here, as were we, on Etain’s opening night. We couldn’t wait. There was so much catching up to do, so many years to be made up for. There was no time to waste. The mission was clear and pressing. If Sir Terence Conran had a new restaurant in Glasgow I was going to be the first Glaswegian to steal one of its ashtrays.

Stealing Conran’s ashtrays has become something of a tradition, a tiny rite of passage. It’s been going on since the 1960s and is now such a restaurant in-joke that the practice has